What's best in highly sensitive/efficient speakers.

[bonzo75]

The word I like to use is bespoke.

Yes that's the word

 

[jeff1225]

Keith was saying not made anymore in the US but in Mexico...but you are right that they should be relatively widely available.

Agreed. I'll amend my comment "designed in the USA."

 

[ddk]

Have you heard the DD55000 Everest?

Edit- My bad I was thinking of the DD66000 when replying below. I had the them before they're excellent but the difference between them and the S9500 K2 is that they were made from JBL parts bin as opposed to the S9500 that was a ground up product including all drivers so the DD55000 shares more of a family sound with the 43xx range than the S9500.

Yes, it's an excellent speaker but you need power and ss amplification to drive it properly. For me low volumes don't cut it I want the dynamics too. The amplification must be capable of driving the speakers with ease to high SPLs distortion free like free flowing water and my choice of electronics struggle with the DD55000.

david

 

[ddk]

Also, DIY does not mean better or worse than professional. It means done by somebody who is not a sustainable professional company that needs to pay regular expenses to employees and rent month on month to survive, and add in margins to meet that expense, as well as for the retail channel. In most contexts I prefer DIY (done rightly) as it is more customizable, more no holds barred rather than focused on cost cutting, so generally shared experience and quality of material in a DIY build is much higher.

Actually there is a distinction, most high end manufacturers are what's called cottage industry and our products must meet a minimum standard of quality to be viable, DIY has it's own set of rules and acceptable standards are more lax than what's assumed as a "manufactured product". Not discussing sound quality here. I've built and sold DIY horn speakers assembled from various vintage designs, they sound great but they're not manufactured products and have design and finishing compromises that the buyer has to accept. Even if I could find enough of the components there's still a lot of work involved to go from a DIY or prototype level product to what is manufacturable, repeatable and serviceable.

PS- A good example of high level DIY'er is Yamamura and the systems he built for Gian & friends.

david

 

[KeithR]

Again, your view as a musician is not the same as the view from a listener's perspective. Most musicians I know are listening primarily to the music and how it is played (it is well known that a lot of famous musicians have VERY modest stereos for listening to their music because the quality is not foremost in their desire to listen to music) rather than the absolute quality of the sound...so yes your view IS different from mine in that regard. As I said though, the musicians I knew who also really "got" the whole sound quality thing were simply blown away by panels with SETs or horns with SETs and "meh" towards more conventional sound systems. I saw this first hand when taking my ex to the Frankfurt (later Munich) High End show and ones around Switzerland. She invariably gravitated towards systems that sounded more real (to me as well) and would only stand in some rooms for a few seconds before leaving (that unnaturalness immediately detected and rejected). Some of her colleagues and friends (and her sister...also a pro violinist) were also like this.

so my ears are shite is your conclusion since i'm a musician and "not a listener"? how is an audiophile not a listener? i've heard "whole sound" SET/high efficiency speaker setups for 15 years now and you think I still don't get it?

i mean seriously dude - do you have golden ears for the forum now based on a single violin? your positions are comical.

 

[microstrip]

Edit- My bad I was thinking of the DD66000 when replying below. I had the them before they're excellent but the difference between them and the S9500 K2 is that they were made from JBL parts bin as opposed to the S9500 that was a ground up product including all drivers so the DD55000 shares more of a family sound with the 43xx range than the S9500.

Yes, it's an excellent speaker but you need power and ss amplification to drive it properly. For me low volumes don't cut it I want the dynamics too. The amplification must be capable of driving the speakers with ease to high SPLs distortion free like free flowing water and my choice of electronics struggle with the DD55000.

david

Reading the edited post - can the excellent DD66000 make an excellent system with the Lamm M1.2 amplifier? It looks a good electrical match (impedance always greater than 5 ohm and 96dB) - but I would also consider it is a good match for the ML3 if it was not for your advise.

 

[ddk]

Reading the edited post - can the excellent DD66000 make an excellent system with the Lamm M1.2 amplifier? It looks a good electrical match (impedance always greater than 5 ohm and 96dB) - but I would also consider it is a good match for the ML3 if it was not for your advise.

It's a great combination and maybe even the best sounding combination with M1.2 but it will be borderline acceptable with the ML3, it comes down to what you need in bass dynamics.

david

 

[jeff1225]

Reading the edited post - can the excellent DD66000 make an excellent system with the Lamm M1.2 amplifier? It looks a good electrical match (impedance always greater than 5 ohm and 96dB) - but I would also consider it is a good match for the ML3 if it was not for your advise.

The ML1.1 would also be a nice match with the DD66000. I find that the ML1.1 does a nice job driving my PBN JBL based speakers to any level I desire.

 

[bonzo75]

I tried the DD 66000 with Emotiva in one set up it was also biamped, and in another with jadis 120, a Swiss class D amp, and the Thrax Heros, model. It sounded good with neither, thin in the mids and difficult to drive, the Thrax could not control it at all.

 

[Folsom]

Yes David, but as far as I remember you had the deserved privilege of owning an original American Sound Turntable and detailed plans/schematics of it. These thinks do not happen just because one day someone decides to go building a turntable - they are due to a cumulative live of dedication and effort.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but I wouldn't exactly go saying the AS2000 is full of extreme trade secrets or anything. It's full of extreme amounts of stainless steel machined to perfection. Yes it has the right choices made, but it's not exactly mysterious.

 

[ddk]

I'm not sure if you noticed, but I wouldn't exactly go saying the AS2000 is full of extreme trade secrets or anything. It's full of extreme amounts of stainless steel machined to perfection. Yes it has the right choices made, but it's not exactly mysterious.

There's no mystery in turntables same basic principles exist since the day they were born but there's engineering in different successful designs under the hood that you don't see in pictures or can figure out by simply looking at it, that's where the differences in sound quality begin to happen.

david

 

[morricab]

so my ears are shite is your conclusion since i'm a musician and "not a listener"? how is an audiophile not a listener? i've heard "whole sound" SET/high efficiency speaker setups for 15 years now and you think I still don't get it?

i mean seriously dude - do you have golden ears for the forum now based on a single violin? your positions are comical.

Never said that, why do you have to be so melodramatic?
The funny thing is that you think my findings on hifi matters are based on a single violin.

Maybe you get it and maybe you don’t, maybe I do and maybe I don’t but I may have an opinion on the matter...

 

[morricab]

The ML1.1 would also be a nice match with the DD66000. I find that the ML1.1 does a nice job driving my PBN JBL based speakers to any level I desire.

Should work fine

 

[morricab]

I tried the DD 66000 with Emotiva in one set up it was also biamped, and in another with jadis 120, a Swiss class D amp, and the Thrax Heros, model. It sounded good with neither, thin in the mids and difficult to drive, the Thrax could not control it at all.

Personally, I found the DD66000 and 67000 to sound somewhat colored, which surprised me . K2 9800 I liked better and would love to hear one like David’s or the DD55000 Everest.

 

[ddk]

Personally, I found the DD66000 and 67000 to sound somewhat colored, which surprised me . K2 9800 I liked better and would love to hear one like David’s or the DD55000 Everest.

Where did you hear them Brad? The electronics JBL uses at the shows are pretty horrible and make the speakers sound harsh and nasal but at the end of the day I prefer the older models too.

david

 

[tima]

all of audio is an "opinion" which unfortunately you just don't get. you have a "my way or the highway" view of audio that just doesn't jive with reality.

my view of live, unamplified music isn't like yours (and I played clarinet growing up and the piano more recently). the boston group on this forum attends concerts, chamber music in houses, etc - none of them own SET amps. what does that mean? absolutely nothing to me - we all like what we like and move on.

i'd also add that if SET/horns were the only true purveyor of sound, there would be many more manufacturers of such equipment. its a niche, just like panels and stats. for some its amazing, for others its not.

We share a similar musical background. I played both piano and clarinet (and bass clarinet) . not at present but the ability to read a score became a gift that stays with me to this day. I will download a score and follow along - it gives a greater appreciation of a performance and its conductor's interpretation.

 

[NorthStar]

Musicians make great lovers ... highly sensitive/efficient lovers, according to all the loved ones.
Is it permissable to say such a thing? If not that'll be the day, I might stick with photography and filmography and documentary ...

Horns, the devils have them, right on top of their heads, and a long tail.

 

[Folsom]

Where did you hear them Brad? The electronics JBL uses at the shows are pretty horrible and make the speakers sound harsh and nasal but at the end of the day I prefer the older models too.

david

Or Mark Levinson which sounds blah.

 

[Ron Resnick]

all of audio is an "opinion" which unfortunately you just don't get. you have a "my way or the highway" view of audio that just doesn't jive with reality.

my view of live, unamplified music isn't like yours (and I played clarinet growing up and the piano more recently). the boston group on this forum attends concerts, chamber music in houses, etc - none of them own SET amps. what does that mean? absolutely nothing to me - we all like what we like and move on.

i'd also add that if SET/horns were the only true purveyor of sound, there would be many more manufacturers of such equipment. its a niche, just like panels and stats. for some its amazing, for others its not.

I am somewhere in the middle. I think that there actually can be a lot of agreement in audio, subjective though much of it is.

Keith asks, essentially, “if horns/SET is so great why don’t more people make it and more people use it?”

I believe strongly that musical genre preference substantially drives loudspeaker preference. If we narrow the musical genre preference to jazz I actually think that a lot of individual subjective preferences would coalesce around a plurality view that horns/SET is the most convincing way to reproduce jazz music.

I personally believe that there is something about the way horn loudspeakers reproduce the sounds of brass instruments which is consonant with the way brass instruments themselves produce their sounds. If people who have experience listening to a lot of different types of loudspeakers hear jazz reproduced by horns/SET I think there would be statistically significant agreement.

If someone’s musical genre preference were mainly rock, or if someone’s musical genre preferences were equally divided among the main genres of music, I would not select for that person a horn/SET system.

 

[morricab]

Where did you hear them Brad? The electronics JBL uses at the shows are pretty horrible and make the speakers sound harsh and nasal but at the end of the day I prefer the older models too.

david

Yeah, now that I think about it the shows I heard them at used less than optimal electronics (like ML).